ABSTRACT
There are currently no prosecutions of individuals for having committed the crime of aggression or what is sometimes called the crime against peace. One fairly good reason for this fact is that there is no treaty or international statute that defines this crime and sets out the elements that a prosecutor would have to prove to convict someone of violating this international crime. There were prosecutions by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, and the subsequent trials just after World War II, but, for various reasons that I will rehearse in this chapter, the Nuremberg prosecutions for crimes against peace have not been seen as establishing a “precedent.”2 I will be interested to examine what the basis of such trials was said to be and why there has been such reluctance to use similar rationales today. I will also ask whether it makes sense to hold individuals responsible for aggressive war even if there was a consensus about the normative basis for such trials. Given that aggression is a crime committed by a State, what is the rationale for holding individuals responsible for this crime?
